A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(August 2012) |
Founded | 2001 |
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Founder | Timothy Prestero, Neil Cantor, Nitin Sawhney, Saul Griffith, Yael Maguire, Ben Vigoda |
Type | NGO |
30-0172078 | |
Location |
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Area served | Africa, South and Southeast Asia |
Employees | 3 |
Volunteers | 850 and counting |
Website | www |
Founded in 2001 by a team of MIT students, Design that Matters (DtM), is a nonprofit design company that partners with social entrepreneurs to design products that address basic needs in developing countries.
DtM's core competencies include ethnography, design and engineering. DtM manages a collaborative design process through which hundreds of students and professional volunteers contribute to the design of new product and services for the poor in developing countries. DtM has completed projects in health care, education, microfinance and renewable energy. The company has worked in Mali, Benin, Kenya, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines and Indonesia. DtM partners include the East Meets West Foundation, Solar Ear, World Education, the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology's Global Health Initiative (CIMIT GHI), the Centre for Mass Education in Science (CMES) in Bangladesh and the Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank in India.
In 2012, Design that Matters received the National Design Award for Corporate and Institutional Achievement. [1]
The Kinkajou Microfilm projector is designed to assist night-time adult literacy education in developing countries. [2] The Kinkajou uses microfilm to store up to 10,000 reference images on a US$5 cassette. Using a high-intensity LED light source and inexpensive plastic optics adapted from Fisher-Price toys, the device is able to project the references images onto a classroom wall. The device draws power from a motorcycle battery, which users charge during the day using a small solar panel.
World Education, an international nonprofit, implemented the Kinkajou projector in 40 villages in rural Mali in 2004. Design that Matters was named a 2005 Tech Museum Awards Laureate for development of the Kinkajou Portable Library and Projector. [3] The product was featured in the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum's "Design for the Other 90%" exhibit in 2008. [4]
DtM created the NeoNurture Infant Incubator in 2010 to demonstrate how to adapt an infant thermoregulation device to the context of a poor hospital in a developing country. The project was a collaboration with both Medicine Mondiale in New Zealand, and the Global Health Initiative at the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, or CIMIT, a nonprofit consortium of Boston teaching hospitals and engineering schools. The goal was to demonstrate how to provide the capabilities of a top-of-the-line infant incubator in an inexpensive device. As part of the early stages of the project, students at Stanford University developed an infant sleeping bag that they then independently developed as Embrace Global. In the final Neonurture design, many product features were implemented using car parts, the idea being that spare parts would be easier to find in a poor country. [5]
You didn't have to be a trained medical technician to fix the NeoNurture; you didn't even have to read the manual. You just needed to know how to replace a broken headlight.
— Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From, Riverhead Books, 2010, p.40
The NeoNurture Infant Incubator was named #1 of the "50 Best Inventions of 2010" by Time magazine. [6] An early "car parts" incubator concept is on display at the Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation at MGH. [7] The NeoNurture concept was featured in the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum's "Why Design Now" National Design Triennial exhibit. [8]
The Firefly Infant Phototherapy device was designed to treat newborn jaundice in poor countries. Firefly uses high-intensity LEDs in a novel configuration to provide high-intensity phototherapy. Firefly was designed through a partnership between Design that Matters, the East Meets West Foundation in California and Medical Technology Transfer and Services in Vietnam. Firefly began clinical trials in Vietnam and the Philippines in December 2011. The device received a Silver Award for social impact design in Industrial Designers Society of America's 2012 IDEA Awards.
A planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation.
Bell and Howell LLC is a U.S.-based services organization and former manufacturer of cameras, lenses, and motion picture machinery, founded in 1907 by two projectionists, and originally headquartered in Wheeling, Illinois. The company is now headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, and currently sells production mail equipment, buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) smart locker and kiosk solutions, and provides maintenance services for automated, industrial equipment in enterprise-level companies. Since 2010, the Bell + Howell brand name has been extensively licensed for a diverse range of consumer electronics products.
Neonatology is a subspecialty of pediatrics that consists of the medical care of newborn infants, especially the ill or premature newborn. It is a hospital-based specialty and is usually practised in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). The principal patients of neonatologists are newborn infants who are ill or require special medical care due to prematurity, low birth weight, intrauterine growth restriction, congenital malformations, sepsis, pulmonary hypoplasia, or birth asphyxia.
A neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), also known as an intensive care nursery (ICN), is an intensive care unit (ICU) specializing in the care of ill or premature newborn infants. The NICU is divided into several areas, including a critical care area for babies who require close monitoring and intervention, an intermediate care area for infants who are stable but still require specialized care, and a step down unit where babies who are ready to leave the hospital can receive additional care before being discharged.
A bili light is a light therapy tool to treat newborn jaundice (hyperbilirubinemia). High levels of bilirubin can cause brain damage (kernicterus), leading to cerebral palsy, auditory neuropathy, gaze abnormalities and dental enamel hypoplasia. The therapy uses a blue light (420–470 nm) that converts bilirubin into an (E,Z)-isomer that can be excreted in the urine and feces. Soft goggles are put on the child to reduce eye damage from the high intensity light. The baby is kept naked or only wearing a diaper, and is turned over frequently to expose more of the skin.
Neonatal jaundice is a yellowish discoloration of the white part of the eyes and skin in a newborn baby due to high bilirubin levels. Other symptoms may include excess sleepiness or poor feeding. Complications may include seizures, cerebral palsy, or kernicterus.
Amy Smith is an American inventor, educator, and founder of the MIT D-Lab and senior lecturer of mechanical engineering at MIT.
Mimio is a brand name of a line of technology products aimed at the education market. The primary products were originally focused around computer whiteboard interactive teaching devices. MimioCapture devices also allow users to capture all of the ink strokes that are written on the whiteboard. When used in conjunction with a video projector it turns the ordinary whiteboard surface into a fully interactive whiteboard. The product line has been dramatically expanded in the last two years as described in the "Hardware Products" and "Software Products" sections below.
A planetarium projector, also known as a star projector, is a device used to project images of celestial objects onto the dome in a planetarium.
Neonatal nursing is a sub-specialty of nursing care for newborn infants up to 28 days after birth. The term neonatal comes from neo, "new", and natal, "pertaining to birth or origin". Neonatal nursing requires a high degree of skill, dedication and emotional strength as they care for newborn infants with a range of problems. These problems vary between prematurity, birth defects, infection, cardiac malformations and surgical issues. Neonatal nurses are a vital part of the neonatal care team and are required to know basic newborn resuscitation, be able to control the newborn's temperature and know how to initiate cardiopulmonary and pulse oximetry monitoring. Most neonatal nurses care for infants from the time of birth until they are discharged from the hospital.
Gustave Pierre Trouvé was a French electrical engineer and inventor in the 19th century. A polymath, he was highly respected for his innovative skill in miniaturization.
The Lemelson Foundation is an American 501(c)(3) private foundation. It was started in 1993 by Jerome H. Lemelson and his wife Dorothy. The foundation held total net assets of US$444,124,049 at the end of 2020 and US$484,432,021 at the end of 2021.
Sir Raymond John Avery is a New Zealand pharmaceutical scientist, inventor, author and social entrepreneur.
Jane Marie Chen is the co-founder of Embrace, a social enterprise startup that produces a low-cost infant warmer, that gives premature and low-birth-weight infants a better chance at survival.
Rahul Alex Panicker is a technology leader and entrepreneur, formerly Chief Innovation Officer at the Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and best known as the President and Co-founder of Embrace Innovations and Embrace, a social enterprise startup that aims to help premature and low-birth-weight babies, through a low-cost infant warmer.
Embrace Innovations is an Indian healthcare technology company specializing in infant warmers. The company produces neonatal warming bags which are used to help reduce the risk of hypothermia in pre-term infants.
Equalize Health is a not-for-profit medical technology company with offices in India, Kenya, and the United States.
Patents for Humanity is an awards program run by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Crib A'Glow is a portable solar-powered phototherapy unit that uses blue LED lights to treat infants with jaundice. The device was invented by Virtue Oboro, a visual designer and mother whose newborn son had developed jaundice. Crib A'Glow has won multiple prizes for innovation.
Virtue Oboro is a Nigerian entrepreneur, and Co-founder of Tiny Hearts Technology. In 2016, she developed and launched Crib ‘A Glow, an LED-lit portable crib that treats jaundice utilizing solar energy, and patented the innovation in 2017.